Trees were for climbing when we were young, also for providing apples, preferably illicit, and for boys, of course, the sources of conkers in Autumn. Only in later life did we learn of their poetic value. As with the Russian poet Marina Tsvetayeva: "Trees! I come to you to save myself/From the roar of the marketplace./How my heart breathes out/ Through your flights upward . . . My bare-headed ones,/My trembling ones." Lucky those who, in school or at home, were brought up to see the trees through from seedling to increasing maturity . . . the acorn, the beechnut, the pine seed. The acorn was easiest and the showiest. You perched it on top of a Ballygowan bottle filled to the top with water, and kept it topped up until the roots came down, and then the green broke out from the side and you had your tree in miniature. Or you just planted it into a pot of soil or compost. And in a surprisingly short time - well, that is in comparison to an oak's span of life - it, in turn, produced acorns from which. . . . and so on. Or brought acorns from your holidays abroad (without soil) and not so much later could say: "That tree came from Collioure" or wherever. A handsome sight in one planting is a tree from a famous forest in Belgium, blazing with yellow flowers a couple of weeks ago.
Today, young eyes and minds are mostly fixed on the internet and other great wonders of the human mind. The wonders of Nature are still to be marvelled at. But, say some, trees grow so slowly. Depends how you reckon time. Trees that just over twenty years ago were seedling acorns are now about thirty feet high. You can be dreamy and mystical about trees. You can claim, as Bismarck did, and others after him, that strength and zest can be brought to your body and mind by leaning against the trunk of a grown tree. Why not? Massive energy is enclosed within the back of a large oak tree, for example. Ralph Whitlock in his book The Oak (George Allen and Unwin 1985) tells us that such a giant may be required to raise one hundred gallons of nutrient-laden water to the tips of its twigs every day all through the Spring and early summer.
All this because the Spring issue of Releafing Ireland has just come through the post, featuring among other articles a series of interviews with Irish foresters by Jan Alexander, founder of Crann, various tributes to the late Freda Rountree and much else.